Historia exemplar de las dos constantes mugeres Españolas A la Señora Doña Catalina Chacon y Rojas, muger de Don Juan Remirez Fariña Cavallero de la Orden de Santiago, Cavallerizo de su Magestad, y su Corregidor en la Ciudad de Ezija [...]

Bookseller Notes

First edition, very scarce, of this novel by the seventeenth-century Spanish courtier and fencing master to Philip IV, Luis Pacheco de Narvez (1570-1640).This baroque tale, penned during the Thirty Years' War, focuses on the misfortunes of its parallel heroines Clauela and Laurena, one from Burgos, in the north of Spain, the other from Seville. A classic courtly novel, the work is a moralistic, almost hagiographic, treatment of female constancy, but also has a picaresque quality, featuring intrigue, travel, and shipwreck.The work represents a curious digression for Pacheco de Narvez, who is best known as a courtier and fencing master to 'El Rey Planeta', Philip IV of Spain, and as the author of various works on fencing, swordplay, and feats of arms. The work is dedicated to Doa Catalina Chacon y Rojas, wife of the Mayor of cija. Like many cities in the province of Seville, cija had its heyday in the Golden Age, bolstered by the influx of wealth from Spain's colonial expansion.Scarce; we can locate just eight institutional copies (BL, NLS, BNE, Tarragona, Dresden, Boston Public, Harvard, Wisconsin).